


World Guardian Shorts

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Series: Aileen Westbrook [2]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Fremennik, Gen, Lord of Vampyrium, Myreque, Nomad's Elegy, OCs - Freeform, Runecrafting, Sliske's Endgame, Temple of Ikov, The World Wakes, World Guardian - Freeform, broken home, questfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-28 15:09:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 20,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6333874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short fics and fragments about my World Guardian, Aileen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is an ongoing series of short fics and fragments about my World Guardian, Aileen Westbrook.  
> They cover a time period from her youth to the present day in the 6th Age, and deal with both canonical and non-canonical events.
> 
> If you find anything about it confusing, it's helpful to consult her timeline: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12712641/chapters/28992114
> 
> If you're not confused, the timeline is still a good read.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Aileen's in-laws.
> 
> Written in January, 2018, after "Bennath, Year Five."

            With my trials, initiation, and wedding behind me, I had to contend with the fact every love-sick bride has to face: that I had not only married a man, but had also married into his family.

            During the long journey across Kandarin Stían had talked about them, but only in the same imprecise, almost dismissive manner he talked about all practical aspects of his life. Besides, at the time we still spoke with each other that halting, make-shift, frustratingly inexact but (it felt to me) fervently expressive mixture of Fremennik and Common that seemed to lend a halo of intricate meaning to the most nebulous expressions, but which in practice limited the depth of our conversations to the surface.

            He had told that his mother had died when he was barely more than a boy, and that his father was in ill health. He had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, both married, and a younger sister who was still a little girl. Finally, he had told me that his father was not expected to live much longer, and that the old man had expressed the wish that his youngest son marry before his death.

            However, if Stían was unforthcoming with information, I did not press him for more either. While we were still on our way, still sleeping in the woods, catching salmon from the streams and roasting it on open fires, while oak gave way to maple and maple to spruce, while the air grew first gentle with the spring and then harsh as we made our way further north, I had carefully neglected thinking about the realities of my future life. As a result, by the time of my marriage I knew next to nothing about my new family.

                The one I had worried about the most, Vídar the Elder, my father-in-law, turned out to be a relief. The man was in his seventies, and what Stían had called ill health amounted to him having been an invalid for a year. He spent his days by the hearth, making rope or whittling when his hands worked, but mostly dozing or staring into nothingness. When Stían first brought me to be introduced to his father, Bergdis had us wait outside while she roused the old man from his sleep. Upon seeing me, he first frowned in what might have been anger, thought, or a sudden wave of pain, but then nodded slightly in approval.

            “Stígandr has married,” he said slowly. His breath was rasping and laboured, but his eyes never wavered from mine. “That is good.”

            During the thirteen months that he lived after making this statement, he barely acknowledged me. I had arrived right at the time this once fearsome man’s mind had begun to fade, and I believe that after a while he forgot about my existence.

            Thus I never came to know my father-in-law. With his children, on the other hand, I was to grow close in a way that I had not anticipated. When years later I returned to Rellekka from my wanderings, I realised it was the three of them I had missed, not the long-scarred wound left by Stían, and that the greatest pain had not issued from his death, but from the grief I had caused them by running away.

***

            Vídar the Younger, Vídar Vídarsson, was the eldest of his parents’ children, and the first one of my in-laws I met. On the morning after our arrival, Vídar had Stígandr bring him to my tent at the town gates. While I could see that he did not condone his brother’s decision to take an outerlander for a bride, he seemed to accept that the damage was done, and therefore considered it futile to oppose my initiation. He greeted me coolly but not impolitely, and introduced himself. I answered his few questions as best as I could in my awkward Fremennik, but had the feeling that he was testing my composure more than listening to my replies. What he made of either, I could not tell. He listened to me impassively, and having wished me good luck with my trials, headed back to Rellekka.

            Following my wedding, Vídar’s behaviour towards me turned more or less overnight from almost inimical to considerate and respectful. At the time the change in his conduct perplexed me, but the longer I knew him, the better I could grasp the reasons behind his initial hostility. Vídar knew Stígandr and his temperament much better than I did, and had feared that I was another one of his passing fixations. Moreover, since his father’s condition had left him with the role of the oldest man of the family, he had to think about the threats an outsider posed to domestic harmony, and the effect it would have on his family’s standing. As every time afterwards, he had shown then more foresight and sense than either Stían or I ever did.

***

             The late Eydis, Vídar the Elder’s second wife, had given birth to the younger Vídar at eighteen, to a stillborn girl at nineteen, to Bergdis at twenty-two, and to Stígandr only eleven months afterwards. The last birth, disastrously close to the previous one, had proved nearly fatal, and for the next fourteen years she had lived in poor health, having no more children. Then, in her thirty-seventh year she had become pregnant with Auda, and in the following spring died being delivered of her. Bergdis, fifteen, had been left with the duties of the woman of the house and a baby to raise. When she was twenty-two, Vídar the Elder had at last permitted her to marry on the stipulation that she and her husband live in his house, which meant they would live under his rule. By the time I met Bergdis she was twenty-six, lived in the cabin she had been born in, and had spent her entire life taking care first of a sick mother, then Auda and her own children, and now her dying father. She had never been out of the Fremennik Province. I was the third or fourth outerlander she had ever spoken to.

            Bergdis was the closest thing I had to a mother-in-law, and as such she provoked in me all the fears a mother-in-law provokes in a young wife. From the first time I met her I could see that she shared Vídar’s apprehensions, and that she was keeping an eye on me. Yet she behaved towards me with a reserved, detached civility that neither affected nor betrayed emotion, and in her calm, matter-of fact way did what she could to help me settle into life in Rellekka. An outerlander sister-in-law — speaking broken Fremennik, unused to their way of life, ignorant of their means of survival — was one more complication to a life already riddled with trouble, but she accepted me as inevitable, and thus dealt with me the best she could.  For all she had been saddled with, Bergdis had that singular, strange self-possession, a thing found only in those who know what their purpose is in the world. She always knew exactly where she ought to be. She always knew what ought to be done in every situation. I admired her long before I began to quietly grow fond of her, and even years later, after everywhere I had been, she always seemed to know some unknowable secret that had eluded me.

***

            Finally, there was Auda. Motherless little Auda, who adopted me on the spot. As far as she was concerned I was simply an additional sister, and one could never have too many. Furthermore, my ignorance offered her a chance to be important: she was always ready to tell me what anything was called in Fremennik, where a particular medicinal plant grew, or what a daggermouth looked like (something she had never seen.) Auda talked without end as we worked; about her friends and enemies among the town’s children, the exploits of her brothers whom she revered unconditionally, or her various illustrious ancestors, all dead. I kept up with her the best I could, came up with questions as often as I could think of, and ended up picking up most of my Fremennik from an overtalkative eleven-year-old.

***

            Every family has its rifts. The first I detected in Stígandr’s, even before I could understand much of what was being spoken around me, was a minor one and concerned Auda. She — or rather her upbringing — was the source of a restrained but continuous conflict between Bergdis and her brothers. Auda had always been Bergdis’ responsibility, which meant that she was judged — by relatives, by neighbours, by the whole town — based on Auda’s conduct. Her brothers, on the other hand, had no such duty and risked no such shame, and had consequently taken to spoiling their little sister from the beginning. Bergdis gave the girl responsibilities; her brothers laughed when she neglected them. When she tried to teach her spinning, weaving, and housekeeping, Stían or Vídar would entice Auda to go and lay traps with them, and she’d come home with her dress torn and her hair full of pine needles. And whenever Auda knew she was going to be scolded, she’d slip out, run across the courtyard around which the family’s cabins stood, and loiter about her brothers’ houses making a nuisance of herself until Freya shooed her home or Bergdis came looking for her.

            I did not need words to grasp the situation. And given how uncertain my standing was at the time, I could also predict that sooner or later Auda was going to test me to see whose side I was on. On one hand, I was recognised as a Fremennik and Stígandr’s wife. On the other, my limited grasp of the language and constant need for guidance relegated me to a status closer to that of a child, which meant I had to tacitly but continuously assert myself as the woman of my own house.  By Auda’s calculating approximation this — combined with my relative youth and connection to her wilder brother — might have placed me on her team, while my sex and status as a married woman allied me with her sister and Freya, Vídar’s wife. I had no choice, of course. One morning I saw Auda sneak out of the yard after Vídar; the same afternoon I heard Bergdis calling her name. When Auda eventually emerged from behind our house — one braid half undone, bare feet covered in dried mud — she saw me carding wool on the bench by the door, and with all the nonchalance of a professional gambler asked:

            “Ailín, can I come inside for a while?”

            “Bergdis is looking for you,” I replied, smiling at her, “I think you had better run along.” Then I returned to my carders.

            Auda  stood still for a second, as if contemplating whether she should try and persuade me, and then turned around and headed towards her home with the stiff posture of the proud defeated.

            Two things happened after that: firstly, while Auda continued to joke and laugh with me, she never questioned again whether I belonged on the grown women’s side. Second, when I saw Bergdis the next time, she nodded to me in greeting, and ever after she treated me a touch more warmly.

***

            There were other such unspoken disagreements, but they were largely too subtle to notice at first. One concerned the only surviving child from Vídar the Elder’s first marriage, who had left Rellekka on a ship and had never come back. There was some ambiguity about what had become of him, an ambiguity that carried not a little social shame, and which always wormed its way to the hushed, coolly civil arguments between Vídar and Bergdis.

            The second one had to do with Stígandr. It existed as something between him and his older siblings, in vague references, turned backs, and disapproving frowns. Initially, I took it to be resentment about his choice of wife, but as time went on — as both Vídar and Bergdis grew more amiable towards me — I understood that the schism extended further back in time, to long before I had ever arrived. The only hint to its nature was a chance remark from Bergdis. It was baking day, and we were kneading dough together at the table while Vídar the Elder dreamed of hunting dagganoth by the fire. Somewhere in the middle of it, in conjunction with some forgotten reference to Stían, she said:

            “I am only glad that he married at last. With the way he was behaving, he was bound to get into —” she let the sentence drop to swat at a bluebottle. When it was gone, she resumed speaking on a wholly different topic. She didn’t mention the matter of Stían’s behaviour again. Nor did she have to; over time I was able to piece together similar remarks from the rest of the town’s women, some of whom made theirs quite bitterly.

***

            That was in 153. After almost a decade of self-imposed exile I returned to Rellekka, and in circumstances no less complicated than the first time, I gradually wove myself back into their lives.

            Out of the three of them, Vídar had changed the least. He had aged, but in every other respect he was the man who had come to see me at my tent at the town gates. As then, I knew there had been a discussion between him and Bergdis on whether I would be allowed to return to the family home. And as then, regardless of what his stance had been in the matter, Vídar had accepted its outcome and treated me as he had before.

            When I saw him for the first time — thinner, greying already, the lines running long and deep across his face — it dawned on me how blindly I had nursed the conviction that had Stígandr lived, this was what he would have become — that age alone would have turned him into his brother who looked so much like him, but was entirely devoid of the dreadful temper and rash impulsiveness that had made him so hard to live with. At the same time I also understood that it had always been self-deceit.

            Then or later, Vídar never brought up my departure or the time leading up to it. There was an unspoken understanding between us concerning the matter, as there will be between partners in crime, even if at the time it was only a sign of things to come.

***

            Bergdis had aged. She had had three more children, two of whom had lived. She had seen Auda marry. She had twice nursed back her husband from the terrible fever that made rounds in Rellekka every winter, and which had left him permanently weakened. In every other sense, her life was the way it had always been.

            She was more reluctant to accept my presence than her brother had been. Not, I believe, because of resentment towards me, but because she did not know what I was there for, or when she would wake up one morning to find me gone. I had intruded upon her family once, left, and now was intruding again. Yet, as the weeks passed and the peace-talks with the Moon Clan — the ostensible reason for my presence in Rellekka — progressed, I found myself tending the vegetable garden with her, scrubbing the laundry in the huge wooden tubs, gathering herbs from the forest; and the work, more than any amount of words, seemed to slowly re-establish a rapport between us.  

            There was something I had not anticipated, though: her curiosity about the outside world. My grave, unemotional sister-in-law who had never had a girlhood, who had never been further than the woods surrounding the town, was the one who most wanted to hear my stories. She listened raptly as I described to her the heist I had committed in a mansion in Ardougne, the adventures I had had in the back alleys of Varrock, and the great journey across the trackless Kharidian Desert. Like all good story-listeners she asked questions, eliciting out of me descriptions of exactly what the temple at the River Salve looked like, how I had found my way through the labyrinthine tunnels to Dorgesh-Kaan, or what kind of an animal a camel was, until she could imagine all of it as if she had been there herself. And while I talked the hard lines on her face would relax, and she’d let out short bursts of incredulous laughter, and for a while she’d look almost young.

            Of course, there were things I left out. I told Bergdis of Morytania but not of Meiyerditch, about my adventures in Ardougne but not of the plague, the thing in the sewers, or what I had found in the underground temple. The thought of that other, strange world she would never see seemed to give her some comfort, and I wanted to let her imagine it without its greatest terrors.

***

            Finally, there was Auda. Skinny little Auda of the bare and quick feet, dress gone to tatters, shooting arrows into haystacks with the shortbow Vídar had made her. She had been thirteen when I left. When I came back she was twenty-two, married, and expecting her second child.

            Though she was aware of my presence from the time I stepped off the boat, I didn’t see her until a week later. She came to visit one morning, supposedly to bring something to Bergdis, but I believe she had decided to not put off seeing me any longer.

            She was almost as tall as I was. She was heavily and tremendously pregnant. Her oldest toddled uncertainly in her wake, grabbing his mother’s skirt for balance every few steps. Auda greeted her sister almost curtly, and then turned to me.

            “Ailín,” she said. “I heard you had returned.”

            I don’t remember what I said. I don’t remember what either one of us said during that short, perfunctory, hopelessly rigid conversation, but she left soon, and it was a long time before I’d see her again.

            And though in time she would take to spending time at her sister’s house once more, and though she would come to treat me with a blank, casual courtesy, she always kept her distance.

            Auda had been guide and teacher, my sister and my friend, and I had taken myself away from her when she had needed me the most. She had lost her brother as much as I had lost my husband, and no matter how she had tried to comfort me, I had left her. And though to an outsider the way we behaved towards each other would have seemed perfectly natural, I always remained painfully aware not only of the rift between us, but of the knowledge that the days before I abandoned her — sitting on the floor, winding wool from the skein Auda was holding, my hands shaking from laughter while she told one of her tall tales — would never come back.


	2. Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the death of her husband, Stígandr, Aileen leaves Rellekka.  
> Contains angst and references to some shit I really, really, hate.
> 
> Written in January, 2017.

     In the spring following Stían’s death, my in-laws could not have been kinder. While I remained weak from blood loss, Bergdis insisted that I stay at her house, and took care of me as she would have of her own sister. Although there had never been any kind of animosity between the two of us, there had always been a distance, and I was somewhat taken aback by the attentiveness and quiet compassion of my reserved, undemonstrative sister-in-law.

     When she finally permitted me to leave, I came home not to dust and cold ash, but to a swept floor and a fire in the hearth. Furthermore, someone wise and foreseeing had gone through my sewing and taken away the things I didn’t need to see — the knit blankets, the tiny booties. From the hooks by the door were gone Stían’s bow and quiver, from the chest his cloak and trousers. There was firewood by the back wall and cured meat in the larder.

     That night I made my bed on the bench. I couldn’t stand the thought of waking up alone in the big bed.

     The weeks passed, and I settled into a routine. I got up before dawn to milk the cow, and carried on with my weaving until the fire gave light no more. I got out of the house to tend to the animals and the vegetable plot. I got out of the yard to fetch water.

     Somewhere along the way Bergdis had been delivered of her own child, and she stayed away either out of want of time or sensitivity towards me. Instead, she’d send little Auda, ostensibly to bring me a bunch of herbs or a few apples, but in reality to keep me company. Auda would chatter in her unbridled way while helping me with one task or another, and for the while she was in the house, I’d forget about my sorrows and talk and laugh like I always had. The more we talked and the harder she made me laugh, the more alone I felt when the gate swung shut behind her.

     Then there was Vídar. Stían’s oldest brother, I mean, not his father. He took to visiting me as well, to make sure that I had everything I needed. He’d always bring something too — firewood, or some salted fish, or a freshly-caught young hare. He never made a show of any of it. He’d  look about and ask if there was anything to do, meaning if there were jobs around for a man in the house. He knew how loath I was to ask for help, and after a while he took to suggesting things himself, instead — saying that he could look at the roof, or do something about unhalved logs in the yard. He’d do whatever he did, and then I’d fix him up with a slice of buttered bread or a cup of hot broth. I’d watch him eat, and we’d talk a bit. When he left, I was peaceful for a long time afterwards.

     I liked Vídar. I always had. I like the calm and measured way he spoke. I liked having him around, and I liked listening to him knocking about in the yard while I sat by the hearth with my sewing. One time he showed up with his cloak torn, and I mended it while he repaired the bolt on one of the windows. Someone, I think his wife’s mother, kicked up a fuss about that.

     Maybe it was that he visited so often, or maybe people thought he showed too much concern over the welfare of his brother’s widow. Maybe something was off in my manner when I talked about him. I don’t know. But at some point the rumour started going around that Vídar Vídarsson was doing more than chopping wood for that outerlander girl poor dead Stígandr had dragged halfway across Kandarin for a wife. And when something like that got going among some of the women in Rellekka, not even the fear of Vígdis could stop it.

     No, don’t get this wrong. Stían wasn’t three months dead. Vídar was his brother and had a duty to look after me. I knew his wife and counted her among my friends. But I’m not saying there weren’t times when I’d watch him tear pieces out of a slice of bread, or try the blade of a freshly-sharpened knife, and I’d wonder how those hands would have felt on my body. I wasn’t proud of it, but I couldn’t stop it either.

     I never let it on in any way, of course. There are things you want to do, but don’t want to have done, and this was one of them. And yet the feeling persisted, together with the idea (and where did that one come from?) that it might have been mutual. Did it show in me? When I spoke to him, when I spoke to others? I don’t know. But by the time the rumour caught up with me, the only explanation that I could come up with was that I was somehow being punished for the thought alone.

     Of course, no-one ever said anything to my face. Not once. Women who talk things like that never say a damn thing to anyone’s face. But from time to time when I was approaching the well or leaving the sauna, I’d catch a fragment of a sentence about “that outerlander woman” and “Vídar”, and if his wife knew, or how soon I might get pregnant again, always followed by bright laughter. I don’t think there were many of them at it, but in a place that small, one or two cows like that can make your life hell.

     Had Vígdis caught them at it, she would have boxed the lot of them around the ears. She loathed gossips, and made sure to put an end to any slander she encountered, but they all knew when to pick their time and place, by the Void. I could have gone to her, of course, and told her about it, but at the time there was a fever epidemic in Rellekka, and I did not want to bother her with my petty troubles.

     I withdrew even further from others. Every word I heard through a wall turned into things about Vídar and me, every smile became a sneer. I began to avoid his wife, though she had never shown anything but kindness and understanding to me. Then I began to worry if my withdrawal would make her suspicious, and that made me even more scared.

     I was lonely. I was frightened. I missed Stían with every inch of my being.

     I feared I’d soon do something I’d regret. I’d let on something to Vídar. I’d tell him to stay away just to shut everyone up. I’d snap one day while we were all making cheese together and break Anni Björnsdottír’s snake-neck with my bare hands. I’d cry in front of everyone.

     I couldn’t bear living alone in the house that was no longer a home. I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying again. I couldn’t bear another one of Rellekka’s freezing winters, living on salt fish and stale black bread while the sun barely came up for three months.

     I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t go home.

     So, in the spring of 156, right around the time I turned twenty, I made up my mind. One morning — when the sky was still dark and the last of the snow had yet to melt from the black ground — I threw my belongings in a backpack. I strapped Stían’s old hunting knife to my belt, wrapped myself in a winter cloak, and drew the hood over my face. And leaving the door unlocked, the cow fed and the fire carefully extinguished, I walked out through Rellekka’s gate.

 


	3. Help Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nota bene: this was originally submitted as a separate fic, but I decided to throw it in with the rest.
> 
> After leaving Rellekka, Aileen arrives in Ardougne.
> 
> Written in February, 2016.

                      Cromperty had just sat down for his third cup of tea and the rest of the morning’s correspondence, when a knock on the door broke his concentration. Irritated by the unexpected early caller, he put down the letter he was reading, and headed for the door. Before he opened, he straightened the diplomas on the foyer wall and put on his tall, pointed hat, lest the visitor forget who he was dealing with.

                      People came to him for all kinds of reasons. They wanted to have spells cast on themselves, or else they wanted to have their possessions enchanted. Some of them bought his inventions, and others wanted him to invent something especially for them. The stranger at his door, however, didn’t want any other spells than one spent in a bathtub. She might have considered a proper meal a new invention.

                      “Good morning,” Cromperty said, without really meaning it. “How can I be of service?”

                      “I came about the sign,” the girl said. She was a stick-thin creature of maybe twenty, and if she had seen better days, they were far behind. She was dressed in shabby wool clothes, a travel cloak over a faded black dress. A mild smell of wet sheep came off her. Her boots were caked with mud. It had been raining on and off since the previous evening, and she looked as if she had spent the night outdoors.

                      “What about it?” He asked, preparing to fish loose change from his pocket.

                      “It says help wanted.” The girl shifted her weight from one foot to another, as if feeling guilty.

                      “I know what it says,” he answered slightly more crossly than he intended. The sign had hung under his plaque for quite a while, and he had almost forgotten about it.

                      “So,” she said, “I came to ask what kind of help it is you wanted.”

                      “An assistant. An errand-runner. A maid-of-all-work,” Cromperty said. His tea was getting cold.

                      “Well,” the girl said, “I can be of assistance, and I can run errands, and I can do all the maid’s work you can find in a house.” It was the longest she had spoken so far, and you could have cut her East Kandarin accent with a knife. Not a beggar then, but a country girl who had come down to the big city for work. Why she had chosen to travel in such weather was anyone’s guess, but it did not make her a criminal. He could at least go through the questions.

                      “And where are you from?”

                      “I just came down from Hemenster last night. Sir.” she said. Hemenster. He would have guessed further up along the coast, but it did not matter.

                      “Can you cook?”

                      “Cook and bake, clean and sew. Wash clothes and iron them.”  _Warsh clothes en eye-an them._

                      “And can you read?”

                      “And write,” she said, and there was just a touch of pride in her voice.

                      He swallowed the question  _“And I suppose you can do sums as well”_ and went for the big one.

                      “Are you pregnant?”

                      The expression on her pale face never changed, and her tone was completely flat when she answered.

                      “No.” He studied her for a while, making up his mind. Her eyes never left his, and for all her worn-out dress and dirty hair she held her back straight. Then there was a rumble from the sky, and he made his decision part out of pity, part out of necessity, and part out of a desire to close the door and withdraw back to the warm indoors.

                      “You get a bed in the kitchen and board beside your wage, and one day off every two weeks. Work starts with breakfast in the morning and ends after supper dishes are done. If you have lied about anything, I will know by the end of today. Do you have any questions, miss…?”

                      “Aileen Westbrook, sir. No, none, sir.” She said. If she was relieved, it didn’t show in her countenance. He could have told her to start the next morning, but for all he knew she had nowhere to go for the night.

                      “Come in then”, he said, at last, stepping aside. She did, and stood on the doormat stiffly, as if afraid of the house. Gingerly, she peeled off her cloak, and bent down to unlace her boots. Then she fished around in her backpack, and produced a pair of clogs and a clean, colourfully embroidered apron. In them, she looked somewhat more like a housemaid than a vagabond. She seemed to await his word, and her eyes darted between him and the surrounding room, taking in the overflowing bookcases, the paper-covered desks, the half-finished gadgets and stray components littering the blue floor tiles.

                      “Well then,” Cromperty said. “The first thing you can do, Aileen, is the breakfast dishes. There’s a pump in the scullery, wood beside the stove and more in the box in the pantry. Once you are done with those, clean up the kitchen and yourself, and then you can take my mail to the post. If you have any questions, ask.”

                      “I will,” She said from the kitchen threshold. “And thank you, sir.” Before he returned to his desk, he saw her reach behind her neck and unfasten two necklaces she had worn hidden inside her dress. One was bronze, and of a strange, foreign-looking make, same as the patterns on her apron. The other one was a thin chain, and on it dangled a ring. She slipped them carefully into her backpack, and then picked up the kettle and disappeared into the scullery. Hemenster, his hat.

                      As he picked up the letter he had been reading, the first drops of rain splattered across the windowpane. By the time dishes began to clink in the kitchen, he could hear the wind howl in the chimney. Then drops turned into a pour, and the rhythm it beat on the slate roof drowned out all other sounds. 


	4. After a While

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set briefly after Help Wanted. Cromperty's new housemaid is somewhat shady.
> 
> The first chapter was intentionally written in a ridiculously florid style. The later ones are much more subdued.
> 
> Written in June, 2016.

           

            Time passed and the girl seemed to settle in, much to Cromperty’s surprise. She had proved to be a quiet, conscientious creature, thorough with her duties and reserved with her talk. To her credit he counted that she was painstakingly careful when it came to money and receipts, never tarried on errands, and cooked like a champion. Furthermore, she kept to herself and never bothered him at his work. But when one hires for a maid a young woman who not only shows up in a state of dishevelment and distress, but also plainly lies about her place of origin —a young woman wearing a clumsy, woollen mourning-dress and a pale stripe on her ring-finger, with no references or recommendations to her name —certain peculiarities are to be expected.

                 For one, she wrote no letters. Cromperty had employed a number of housemaids over the years, and each and every one of them, regardless of where they came from, had kept up some manner of correspondence with their families.  This one, if she had kin anywhere in the world, did not wish to talk to them, for she neither sent nor received mail of any kind; never went down to the post office save to fetch his parcels, never waited at the  window for the mailman.

                Secondly, she seemed to strike up no friendships with servants in the surrounding houses. While she didn’t quite shun them, and always made polite small-talk when greeted by a colleague —the innumerable and interchangeable Lilys and Roses in their aprons and caps — he never saw her join them on market trips, or walk out with friends on her days off. Her spare time was spent in solitary ways; tending to the little herb garden she had set up behind the house, or reading through Cromperty’s private library.

                That had been another surprise. One night after finishing up, she had asked for a permission to borrow his books. He had granted it, though somewhat taken aback, even more so when she had picked E.T. Cetridor’s  _Comprehensive and Accurate History of Rune-Magicks,_ and had carried it with some difficulty to the kitchen. A while later, he remembered, she had tiptoed back into the study and slipped out before he had the time to look around. He had assumed that she had returned the book as too hard a read, but when he had later glanced at the bookcase, the treatise was still gone, together with the _Cracklewip Dictionary of Educated Words._ Before heading upstairs for the night, he had peeked into the kitchen to find her at the table with both volumes open, too immersed to pay him any heed.

                She talked little. She never laughed, and hardly ever smiled. But she’d always look a man in the eye, and answer in her brisk, frank manner, no matter who she spoke to, and no matter whether what she said was true.

                For all her odd ways, at least the girl made an effort to not stand out. After receiving her third wage, she had come home with a roll of blue cotton print, and soon her ungainly wool dress had been replaced by something that made her look if not smart, at least respectable. Her outlandishly embroidered apron was swapped for a plain one, and at his behest she gave up carrying a knife in its pocket. Spring turned to summer, and the white stripe on her third finger faded, until no trace of it was left. And while a certain hard-to-define quality remained in her manner —a mixture of reticence and unservile self-assurance —there soon was nothing to set her apart from the crowd in any Ardougne street; nothing to make anyone look twice as she went about emptying dust pails, or weeding the herb garden, or filling her grocery basket at the market by the piers.

 

   


	5. Wizards' Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aileen recalls her trip to the Wizards' Tower and the events of Rune Mysteries.
> 
> Nota bene: She did the old version of the quest, with the minor difference that the job was commissioned by her employer, the Wizard Cromperty, and not the Duke of Lumbridge.

_“In the spring of 157, my employer sent me on an errand of a different kind. He wanted me to travel to the Wizards’ Tower in Misthalin, and take a valuable package to Archmage Sedridor…”_

_"From the time I first set foot inside the Tower, I wanted to become a wizard. I still can’t say whether it was more about fascination with magic and knowledge, or the sheer air of the place. It all seemed so calm and dignified — the white marble halls, the senior mages at their research, the students arguing about spell mechanics by the fountain outside._

_As for me, I was twenty-one. I had spent a year in a kitchen in Ardougne. I had never been to any place that grand. And those people…they belonged to a different, alien race; one that I had only briefly encountered, but had always envied and admired. They were scholars. That in itself was magic._

_I know, I know, I lived with a wizard. I worked for a wizard. But in my mind, Cromperty with his sour stomach and house full of spare parts had nothing in common with these enchanted beings who studied the mysteries of existence. He was a different thing._

_But at the time, all I knew was that I wanted desperately to be one of them. I wanted to talk like them. I wanted to look like them.  I wanted to have a desk covered in runestones and ancient books, so that one day as I was sitting behind it, I could look up from my work, and see someone just as dirty and bedraggled as I had been, and ask “How can I help you?” with the same perfect poise as Sedridor. If I could only become like that, I’d never feel lost or guilty or ashamed again._

_That’s what I thought._

_It was all hopeless, of course. I was no sorcerer’s apprentice. I was an errand girl with five years of grammar school under her belt, no money, and a past I couldn’t talk about. But for the few months I spent there, I drank in every bit of knowledge I could, I read as much as I could, I talked to everyone who would talk to me._

_I also lied to everyone who would talk to me. I made it out I was Cromperty’s assistant or secretary. I couldn’t tell the truth._

_Well, I went to Varrock. I came back from Varrock. And just like that — I couldn’t even comprehend the scale of it at the time — we were crafting runestones again. But that’s another story, and not the one I want to tell either._

_But back at the Tower, the wizards were sending students to make runes at the Water Altar, and they allowed me to tag along and have a try at crafting. It was half a joke to them, but I actually got hold of it terribly quickly. Too quickly for some people’s taste, as far as I recall. So, I did a bit of runecrafting, enough to understand the principle, and later some of them let me have a go with the stones. Taught me a few simple spells. Picked that one up quickly too, or at least parts of it._

_And in my head, in my stupid head I began to nurse a long-dead dream."_


	6. Rune-running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Direct sequel to Wizards' Tower. Aileen recalls the beginning of her adventures in Ardougne.

_“No, he did not take me as an apprentice._ _After Cromperty turned my request down —and I had thought he would — rune-running was the next best thing, because being a runecrafter was the next best thing from being a wizard. So that’s what I became, a rune-runner. A covert rune-runner, to be precise._

_You see, at the time the Ourania altar, which is a sort of a general altar — all wild magic and arbitrary charges, it’s like rolling dice — was the only place where certain high-powered runes could be crafted. Death, blood, soul runes, there was no other place to make them.  The problem was, Ourania was controlled by Zamorakians. The Zamorakian Magical Institute. And they weren’t about to let anyone else use it, especially not with the Saradominists blocking their way to Entrana._

_However, others did have a crack, if only you didn’t fear being found out and killed. or didn't fear any kind of  a painful death, really. What I’m saying is Ourania is not an easy-to-guard place. It’s a massive cave complex, full of bottomless pits and secret passages and nooks and crevices and dead ends. The ZMI crafters mostly stuck to the main cavern, but if you managed to sneak in, you could make your way down to the altar through side tunnels, charge your essence, and be out before the guard came back. A few months after rune-production resumed, there were already a few people Ardougne doing exactly that._

_To come back to the main story, Cromperty thought I could join them. He’d secure some essence for me, I’d craft it for him, and he’d pay me per trip to the altar. How stupid was I, then? Not just stupid enough to agree to the suggestion in the first place, but stupid enough to agree to the payment principle. You won’t know how priceless runes were back then, even the lower-powered ones. Then from time to time, the altar would spit up a burst of blood magic, and each and every one of those stones was worth my three weeks’ wages. And I let him pay me by the trip!_

_Nevertheless, I loved it. Usually, my expeditions took about two days, there and back, and during that time I was free. Out through the south-east gate, then along the city wall, that’s not a place to be, to be honest, there’s always Khazard troopers about, not to mention other Zamorakians. Continue all the way to the foot of Galarpos Mountains, until you come to the entrance, hidden away in an old shrine. The best time to sneakin is early in the morning, when the place is deserted. Descend down the first passage, and as soon as you’re in the open, squeeze through a crevice to a side tunnel…light you lamp immediately afterwards, but never before._

_At any rate, I wasn’t cooking any dinners. I wasn’t ironing any clothes. What I was was being in constant danger, now about to fall to a pit, now about to be spotted by the guards, and all that time I felt a sense of exhilaration, drunk on the adrenaline and the knowledge that I had outsmarted the ZMI itself. And while it lasted, I never thought about the past or the future, or how it might all end suddenly, or about any of the things I had lost.”_


	7. Disaster (Riding High on a Wave)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events of Temple of Ikov, Aileen's time in Ardougne comes to a close.  
> Hazeel Cult, Tribal Totem, and Plague City have happened previously, as have other Ardougne Area quests.

            All that time I had been riding high on a wave, unable to stop, knowing that looking down or trying to go slower would cause me to fall hard. I had been taking bigger and bigger risks, daring the disaster to hit.

            When it did, it wasn’t what I had expected. It wasn’t what I had dreamed up in the long cold hours before dawn, as I strained my ears for footsteps outside my room — all that would have to wait for years. What I got then was a warning.

            Against my better judgement, I did not leave right away after the botched job at the Temple of Ikov. Instead, I came back to Ardougne and tried to resume my normal life. I thought I was off the hook. I thought I could wear it out.

            Within a week, I was living like a fugitive. I knew too much, and there was no getting away from that.

            I changed lodgings daily, going from inn to inn, and at night I would lie awake, half-expecting a knock on the door every second. At the market square in broad daylight, or at the piers at night I waited for the doom to come, and tried to guess its shape. Would it be the Hazeel Cultists? Lucien’s thugs? Lord Handelmort’s men? Did the Mourners know who had helped Elena escape, and would they come for me?

            Then, one night at the Poison Arrow Pub, young Irwin Feaselbaum sat down at my table without greeting me. He was an assistant to a Zamorakian wizard, rumouredly a necromancer, who lived in an abandoned watchtower at the edge of town. Irwin studied under him, and had bought runes from me on several occasions. We had always got along well. Despite his employer, there was nothing particularly evil or chaotic about Irwin, unless you counted his lax attitude towards property law. From time to time, he’d make some joke about old Invrigar and Cromperty, equating us in status, although in reality I had been a rune-runner and a maid while he was an actual sorcerer’s apprentice. He probably knew it warmed me. He was alright.

             “Aileen,” he was whispering to me now, leaning across the table. “You’ve got to stop coming to Ourania. They know. The wizards know you’ve been there. They know your name and what you look like. I don’t know who tipped them off, but I heard Invrigar talking about it. Stay out!” Without waiting for my response he got up, and in a second he was out of the door.

            Now besides everyone else, the Ourania Zamorakians were after me. I would have to quit rune-running, and rune-running was all I knew. And with my livelihood thus gone, I knew I had no other option than to leave. So, two days later, I got on a ship bound for Port Sarim, Asgarnia, and I didn’t look back.


	8. Mrs Whitby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After fleeing once more, Aileen arrives in Varrock.

 

 

               Varrock lies deep inland, at sea level and south of an open plain. The winters are icy and dry. The summers are dusty and hot. I arrived there on the eve of winter, as Ire of Phyrrys gave way to Novtumber, and the bitter north wind was already tearing the last of the leaves from the trees.

                Varrock! Varrock is huge, not in terms of acreage, but in terms of the inwards-opening space that is created by a combination of population and building density; high, slanting houses with too many rental rooms, and mazes of narrow, spiraling lanes. A beehive. A labyrinth. A great and filthy city.

                What’s more, it’s bisected. North of High Street are the Palace, the Grand Exchange marketplace, the Museum of Natural History, and the main Saradominist Church. The houses are large. There is enough space between them to contain fires and allow for proper sanitation. The sewers work.

                As for the southern half, things are still well enough along the two main streets, one running east to west and the other north to south. Here’s the famous Blue Moon Inn. There’s the bank. There's the guardhouse with its alert sentinels. But go _diagonally_ —away from the city’s heart and towards the edge — and that is where you will find what people mean when they speak of South Varrock.

                Going away from the main thoroughfares, the squalor gets worse block by block. It starts with respectable shopkeepers and honest burghers, and ends with loan sharks, knocking shops, and a Zamorakian temple with its back to the fortifications. There’s plenty of crime. There is open prostitution, much of which takes place in the streets. There’s what’s called protection operations, run by several territorial gangs. And there’s plenty of people trying to get by who want to go on raising their children.

                If you head directly south from the eastern bank building, Mrs Whitby’s is the last respectable lodging house you’ll encounter.  If you’re in Varrock, and are looking for decent accommodations for a reasonable price, go there.

                 Look for an L-shaped house near the runestone shop, a large and somewhat old-fashioned graystone building with oddly irregular roof. It will have thick, distorting panes set in the grids of its small windows, an immaculately swept front step, and a slight, though not hopeless air of dilapidation and wear. That’s Mrs Whitby’s.

                Now a word about Mrs Whitby.

                She was (Is she still? I don't know.) a small but vigorous widow of indeterminate age and immeasurable meanness. Let it be said that she ran her lodging house like a bloody-minded admiral runs a slave ship, and detested visibly every one of her tenants. As I later learned, the late Mr Whitby had left the house to his wife back when it was worth something, and in order to pay first his debts and later her own bills, she had taken to having boarders in the half a dozen spare bedrooms. Given how she was, it must have been a tough one to swallow.

                 She was fierce about being respectable, was Mrs Whitby. Having long ago delegated all practical work to her housemaid Sarah, (the most thoroughly subjugated servant I have ever known, who lived in the kitchen with her three children), she dedicated her time entirely to keeping an eye on her lodgers in order to make sure none of us endangered the reputation of her establishment. If she found any fault with your character, you would know the reason why, and then had to find another place to stay.

                In Ardougne, Cromperty had never asked me for any personal details. A few quick words had landed me a place to stay in Lumbridge. Now, face to face with my about-to-be landlady, I had to think on my feet, and ended up telling her the somewhat abbreviated truth. I was from Kandarin, I said, and had married while young. We had moved from one country to another. Now that my husband was dead, I had come to Varrock to make my livelihood as a runecrafter.

                Fortunately, at that point I had become quite a fluent liar. I had altered my backstory many times to conceal many different things, and without meaning to, I had grown good at what I did. (And it has stuck with me ever since, although these days I prefer to say nothing. As a result, most new people I meet learn nothing about me. It seems to suit them fine. Some people know some secrets, but not others. Those who know about Lucien and Ghorrock and the green butterfly don’t know about Stían. Those who know about him and the baby and Vídar don’t know about any of the other things.)

                 Forgive my digressions. These things matter little to anyone else, but they mean the world to me.

                 As for Mrs Whitby, she listened to all this without a comment. She sat in her chair by the fire, a squat woman about as broad as she was tall, wearing a very respectable black dress and the largest star of Saradomin I had ever seen. She had sunk deep in the chintz and the pillows, and a crocheted lap robe blurred disturbingly the line between chair and her. I could catch the whiff of cooking sherry from several feet away.

                 She did not, I could see, like the sound of runecrafting, but apparently thought it a respectable enough job for a once-married young woman.  I knew this, because soon she reached for the book that doubled as a ledger and a record of her guests, and wrote down in it my personal information. Name, age, marital status, profession. She inspected my money. She put it in her purse, which disappeared in the recesses of the chair. Then she called for Sarah, and told her to show me to the garret room. When she said that, she inadvertently gave me the name I was always known by in Varrock: Widow Westbrook.


	9. The Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by an older graphical version of the Wildy.

      “We’re walking all over the dead, you know.”

            “Sorry?” I asked. I had not been paying attention.

            “I said we’re walking all over the dead,” Dr Harlow repeated. “Right now. You won’t know the amount of bonemeal in the ground here.” It was a bright, crisp day of early Raktuber, and we had come to stroll along the moat that separated Misthalin from the barren plains of the Wilderness. The doctor, who was living through one of his more sober phases, had been recently permitted to return once more to Mrs Whitby’s lodging house. At breakfast that morning I had agreed to accompany him on a walk.

            Now he paused in his tracks, and turned to look northwards. The trench at our feet was muddied from the spring rains and filled with dark water. Beyond it the long, low hills of the borderland looked nondescript in the sunlight. Nothing about the landscape –yellowing grass, stretches of a crumbling wall, a haze over the horizon –suggested anything out of place. 

            “You’ve never been beyond the ditch properly, have you?” he asked. At that time I had not, and I said so.  “The blast that ended the God Wars,” he continued, “wiped out just about everything from here to the far northern shore. Trees, fields, topsoil, habitation, every poor bastard who had not asked to be there in the first place. Here at the edge of the destroyed zone, a battle was going on between four armies. The firestorm didn’t reach quite this far, but the explosion was enough to kill most of them.” As Harlow spoke, he had fished from his coat-pocket a small silver hip flask. He took a swig from it, then another, and went on.

    “You see those hills?” He asked. “Those are not natural formations at all. They’re barrow-mounds, that’s why they’re such a damned funny shape. There’s an eyewitness account of their making, recorded in a Fourth-Age manuscript. I reckon the Palace library has a copy of it, if you’re interested.” Harlow gulped his drink and licked his lips, eyes seeing nothing. “The blast was enough to kill most of them,” he said, “and it was up to the rest to bury their dead. And so they, the living few, piled the corpses high. The human with the goblin, the icyene next to the vyre, the aviansie and the great raurg. And when the corpses were all in heaps, they covered them with five feet of earth and buried them as flakes of white ash fell from the sky.”

    Harlow repocketed his flask, leaving a faint whiff of alcohol in the air. He was living through one of his more sober phases, and that meant he only took a hip flask for a few hours’ walk. He had been that way for nineteen years, Mrs Whitby said, ever since he had returned from Morytania for the last time. Now he squinted and blinked at the sunlit hills, as if trying to remember something. In the trees behind us, birds sang their calls. Over the mounds, the wind stirred the grass over the bones of four armies. Harlow’s lips formed words, but no sound came out. Aloud, but very quietly, he said one thing:

    “We’re walking all over the dead, you know.”


	10. Ten Seconds (Drakan's Death)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of The Lord of Vampyrium.

            Letting his sister’s limp, lifeless wrist fall from his hand, Lord Lowerniel Drakan drew up to his full height and turned around to face me.

            The moment Vanescula had leapt out of the vortex, I had taken the opportunity to stumble-run to the other side of the castle roof — the real castle roof, the one in Morytania with Zanaris full overhead and Darkmeyer spreading far, far below — to get the glowing portal between us. Somewhere — somewhere between the shakes and the pain and the thrumming in my ears I understood that the bright light disturbed a vyre’s eyesight more than it did mine. Furthermore, it would force him to circle around the perimeter rather than head straight for me, which would buy me time. I needed time.

            With Vanescula left sprawled on the floor alongside the remaining three Myreque, I was the only one still standing. Standing or standing; somewhere along the endless spiralling stairs I had twisted my left ankle, and could hardly put weight on it. For now, it dragged me down with every step. If I was alive in two hours’ time, I would not be able to walk.

            But two hours didn’t matter. Hours had become irrelevant; at this point we were down to dealing with seconds. I was backing away bit by bit, trying to put as much distance between the two of us as I could. Distance was what I needed. Distance and time, and all the while the blood from the gash on my forehead kept seeping into my eyes, rendering everything red and blurry and broken —

            At his full health, Lowerniel would have been upon me in five seconds, but he was no longer what he had been when I first saw him. Vanescula’s blade had gone right through his left wing, tearing membrane and splintering bone, and with one appendage gone he was not only ground-bound, but off-balance. The Myreque had not been entirely unsuccessful either. Dozens of small wounds were cross-hatched across his body, all trickling blood, all aching. On his right thigh, among the matted hair and black stains, I could make out the fletchings of a blisterwood bolt.

            He was no longer what he had been, no; the spear was still stuck in his back, the injured wing weighed him down and the bad leg dragged every step of the way, but he was still gaining on me. Slowly, slowly around the edge of the roof we went, I backing away and he pursuing in a staggering chase, both of us injured, both of us slow, but neither finished, neither done, never done until —

            _Keep the portal between you. Keep him blinded._

— only one remains.

My wand was lost, my sickles were somewhere on Vampyrium. All I had left was the crossbow, the Screwte, and I had shot and missed the moment Vanescula had charged through. What I needed was time, time to stop for a span and load, and if I only had it, in the portal’s glow he would not be able to see me —

            _Ten seconds. It would take ten seconds to span the bow, load it, and take aim, and I only had five._

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I backing away and him gaining on me, the longer stride overtaking the shorter one —

            _Ten seconds. It took me ten seconds when I had no strength left._

A lifetime ago, in the sewers beneath Meiyerditch Veliaf had made me span and shoot, span and shoot, span and shoot until I cried from the pain in my arms. He had shouted out the instructions, then counted the seconds between every stage aloud —

_“Lock lever in place!” — Click of metal —_

_“Foot in stirrup!” — Eyes forward, do it by feel —_

_“Span your bow!” — Wrench up the lever—_

Ten seconds. The huge, grizzled figure was drawing closer, its gray fur glistening with sweat and blood —

            _“Load!” — Bolt slides in place —_

_“Aim!” — Eight, nine —_

_“FIRE!”_

Span and shoot, span and shoot, span and shoot, bolt after bolt after bolt flying into a sack Vertida had filled with sawdust because there was no straw left anywhere in Meiyerditch. And now Vertida was dead, him and Radigad and Mekritus with all his worries, ended by a long fall and a short, sharp, shock.

            _Ten seconds. I needed ten seconds._ I could smell him by now, even with my vision blurred, the rank stench of a beast of prey drawing closer, closer, closing in and I could no longer retreat —

 _Runes. You’re not out of weapons. You still have runes._ Through the pain in my body and the burning in my throat and the adrenaline haze that made the world as sharp as it was unreal, I realised that I still had the rune pouch on my belt. One pouch, three compartments, each with runes for a single missile.

            I had neither wand nor staff, and a hand-cast spell against a vyrelord is little more than bluff, but bluff was all I needed. It would not injure him, but it would buy me time.

            _Five seconds._

_Five seconds until contact._

_Hide in the light._

_Let him think you have frozen in terror._

_Let him think he has you beaten._

_Don’t let him see you reach into the pouch —_

– And right as Drakan lunged, my hand came up and sent the weak, pitiful smoke spell in his face.

            It must have caused more surprise than pain, but that was enough, enough to give me the time to rush off, skittering past the portal with my lame foot dragging, past the portal and up on the throne, bow in one hand and goat’s-foot lever in the other —

            — to crouch where I had the higher ground.

            _Lock lever in place._

Drakan had already recovered and was heading for me once more, a huge, bleeding, towering thing —

            _Good foot in stirrup._

Eight seconds. He groped at the air; the spell had hit him in the eyes.

            _Span. Get up, Westbrook, you —_

Five. He was almost upon me.

            _Load._

Three —

            _Steady._

Two —

            _Aim._

One —

            _Fire._

***

            And then it was all over. He had collapsed into a genuflection in front of the throne, dying, spent, the bolt of barbed silvthril and blisterwood buried deep in his throat. I was panting, bleeding, shivering, but victorious, standing over him with the Sunspear steady in my hand.

The pain would come later. That much I knew from experience; the pain would come later, but for now there was only the rush of blood, the adrenaline madness that made the world clear enough to see the smallest things, and yet slow and unreal as a fever dream.

            In that dream I was standing at the roof of Castle Drakan in Darkmeyer, and the Lord of Vampyrium was kneeling at my feet.

            Crouched on the floor and panting like a dog, he looked more like an animal than ever. A huge, grizzled, ancient beast, guileful in its ways and skilful when it came to the hunt, but a beast nonetheless. It had fought for the leadership of its pack, and had come second for the first and final time.

            The fight had been long and merciless, and blood was seeping out of his many wounds — from the torn and useless left wing, from his back where his sister had stabbed him, from the cuts our sickles had left, from his neck where my last crossbow bolt had lodged itself. From a glance at the sheer amount of it, one could see that he would not live for long.

            Some of it had dried and matted on his pelt, more was still running out in dark, glistening streams. But between the rivulets of blood and the old, jagged scars, his fur was still silvery, rich and silver-white and infinitely soft. In that same dream, with no-one else watching and the whole world locked away beyond the rush of blood, I reached out and stroked his face.

            Like silk, like white-willow leaves, soft and downy as mouse-fur, with the heat from his body almost burning my tender, aching hand.

“Are you…done?” His voice was hoarse, the words punctuated by short gasps. “If…you…are…I would like to be…finished with this.”

            “I know.”

                 He wanted to get it over with. Not because of the pain, not because of his wounds, but because of the shame of defeat. I, however, wanted to savour the moment. Lowerniel Drakan had spent thousands of years grinding his defeated enemies to dust; no-one could begrudge me a few seconds of the same…Silk, hot and soft, and had I had the time, I would have buried my face in the thick, tangled mass of his mane.

            “I should keep you alive,” I murmured quietly, my voice soft enough to be almost lost in the wind. “I should keep you alive and have you de-fanged and de-clawed and kept on a leash. On a leash…in a cage out where everyone can see you.”

            He did not reply, but from the weak twitch of his ears I knew that he could hear me. Hear me, and perhaps imagine it.

            By then, though, I did not have much time left. His breaths were growing shorter and hoarser, his entire body slowly sinking. But before his death, I wanted to make him look in the eye. My fingers knotted deep in his hair, and slowly I pushed his head back until I could see the glinting, dark, fundamentally animal eyes.

            For a moment his lips moved inaudibly, trying to shape words. Then, darting his tongue out to moisten them, he managed to speak.

            “Vanescula…” he said, “does she live?”

            “I don’t know,” I replied. “What is it to you?”

            “She…is my sister.”

            “You’re going to die because of her,” I said quietly, working my fingers through the long, matted mane.

            “I will,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “As will…you…all. Know this…human…she will…betray you before the end.”

            After that, he spoke no more, nor did he raise his eyes. I let his head slump forward, and the only movement he made was the laboured rising and falling of his bloodied shoulders. I did not know what he was after with his words, no did I care. The sun rises and sets, rivers run to the sea, vyres lie.  Whatever he had meant and whatever would come afterwards was for someone else to handle. I, for my part, had only one obligation left. Reluctant, dutiful, tired, my fingers left the softness of the fur, and found the hard, strong wood of the spear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made the first, rough version of this back in September, 2017, but ended up posting only the latter, post-fight part of it. The second version did not turn out the polished thing I had intended — it still has bad rhythm and structure and quite a lot of repetition — but I couldn't figure out a way to improve it while still retaining all the parts I wanted to keep.
> 
> As for the fight scene, I used this fascinating and instructive video for information on crossbows:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D64oZCHAns&t=976s   
> All errors are my own, feedback is appreciated.


	11. The Last Shelf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the Ritual of the Mahjarrat, Aileen and Wahisietel have a chat.  
> All my fics with the tag "the last shelf" are from that shelf.
> 
> Written in October, 2015.

_I asked Ali the Wise about the last shelf. He says the notebooks and scrolls on it are from a bygone era, relics of a lost world, most of them fragments and almost all somehow damaged._

_When I asked if I could have a look at them ( and he knows how much I love old books) he looked away, and said it wasn’t the time for that yet. Turning his back to me, he picked up the canopic jar from the table and studied it carefully, as if the painted palmettes and lotuses  held an answer he was looking for._

_Finally, he looked up again._

_“I’ll tell you what”, he said. “If we both survive attending the Mahjarrat Ritual, I’ll translate some of them for you. If only you survive, you can come down here and read whatever you want, if you can only understand it.”  
_

_I said we had a deal._


	12. There Was a Trick to It

 

  There was a trick to it.

    If she concentrated hard on the part that was not her —the part that had not been there when she agreed to help Orlando Smith with his excavation —she could call it out, force it to manifest itself. The warmth and tingling in the palm of her hand would become a burn, and from its centre the butterfly would emerge; ethereal, iridescent, its wings the green of the groves on Zanaris.

    She’d summon it, and let it fly around her until it inevitably faded, and she’d feel something return to her. Kami said that the butterfly felt familiar, but could not be talked to. It wasn’t, she said, like her and the wisp colonies. It was something she shared origin with, but older, and much more powerful.

    She invokes the butterfly when she’s alone and frightened, and watches the flicker of its wings in the deep, dark places of the world. When it returns to her palm to dwindle back to where it came from, she knows it’s time to go on.


	13. Gulvas Mansion I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set right after the end of Broken Home.

”The last man, the ghost — how long ago did he live?”

“Hundreds of years ago,” I replied. I was too tired to try and calculate a more exact number. “Back in what is now referred to as the Fourth Age.”

“I see,” the demon said in Infernal. Despite my understandable lack of practice, I found his speech relatively easy to follow.

“It is the Sixth Age now, it has only just begun,” he continued. I nodded. He knew it because Ingram's servants had known it.

A part of me burned with a desire to find out how Chthonians processed and pieced together the information they acquired by consuming other beings. For the moment, however, that part was overshadowed by another one that burned with a desire to find a reasonably clean bed and to sleep for a week.

“The ghost was the only one who had some grasp of the Infernal Tongue, and even he knew it only in its written form. The others knew nothing beyond certain words, and those mostly in corrupt forms.” I could interpret neither my new housemate’s intonation nor his body language, but I could see where the conversation was headed. I had had it before in an ancient pyramid the desert Menaphites shun, and later in a labyrinthine temple beneath the ever-shifting sands, and I was not up for it at the moment.

“None of them had ever heard of Senntisten. Or of the Empire. Of Zaros. Of my people.”

I paused on the stairs, my hand barely steady on the dusty rail. I didn’t want to get into it. _It’s all gone. It’s all wiped out. Senntisten, the Empire, Zaros, and your people._ Sooner or later I’d have to tell him about the Betrayal, about the God Wars, about Zamorak’s visit to Infernus, about the Avernics. But not tonight.

“They had not,” I replied. “Few have. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it tomorrow.”


	14. You Can't Have Someone Like That Walking Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during Nomad's Elegy.
> 
> Written in February, 2016.

”You can’t have someone like that walking around.”

Back in Catherby, when I was maybe ten, the Cartwrights’ little girl went missing. The day after they found the remains of her dress in Old Man Barlow’s ash grate, I heard my mother and father talk in the kitchen.

“You can’t have someone like that walking around.” That’s what my father said, and I saw him and Mr Hickton and two other men leave together that night, and one of them was carrying a coil of rope on his shoulder.

A week later someone went to the oak tree and put Barlow in the ground.

“You can’t have someone like that walking around” is what I thought on the bridge above the pit, and that’s about what I said too. The magic in the spear meant it mattered little where I aimed, but I tried to go for the heart. It was over in seconds, and that's more than most people get.

I know who took his body, but I don’t think he got put in the ground.


	15. I Have Never Been Afraid of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Kindred Spirits. Aileen recovers from Sliske's beating and dreads the future.
> 
> Written in May, 2016.

_I have never been afraid of the sea. I’ve lived by one ocean or another most of my life, and have never felt quite at home inland. The air doesn’t smell right._

_But when I stood at the head of the pier today leaning on my crutch, squinting through a swollen eyelid and looked out to the horizon, I could not help but think of the ancient journal in my trunk. And though the day was pleasant and the wind gentle, I found myself recalling certain peculiar events and places, none of which I had ever connected to another the monstrous, inexplicable stone heads at the Void Knights’ outpost the nonsensical account the old man at Silvarea had given me concerning the origins of the skeletal abomination the ruined cave complex where diabolically howling ape-things had chased me through the nightmare darkness and I shivered despite the warmth._


	16. A Letter to a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter to a friend of Aileen's, written early in the winter of year 4.  
> (A hype-piece for Children of Mah to bridge the events between Kindred Spirits and CoM, written in November, 2016, a day before the latter's scheduled release.)

                 -- of Novtumber, Year 4 of the 6th Age, Gulvas Mansion, Misthalin

                 Dear ---,

                No relatives of Ingram’s have come forward to claim ownership of the mansion, and as long as none do, I’ll continue to make my home here. In the absence of a staff to take care of the whole house, I’ve sealed off most of the rooms (including the entire first floor) leaving in use the kitchen, the study, and the library (which I use for a bedroom). These are all I need, and are just about what I can keep heated and clean by myself.

                I have not written for a long time, so perhaps a summary of what has happened since Bennath is in order.

                After the incident at the Barrows it took me a long time to recover. I stayed first at Burgh de Rott, which in a few years has turned into a quiet a lively little port town. Ships from Wushanko and Mos’le Harmless stop there to stock up on supplies, and occasionally a riverboat from Misthalin or Kharid will come down the Salve to trade. Small sections of Mort Myre have been successfully drained, and when I left, the crops were coming up beautifully.

                However, as soon as I was well enough to travel, I didn’t tarry. Morytania may be improving, but I still have no desire to spend time there. Furthermore, I feared that should I stay longer, I’d somehow be drawn to the many political conflicts that continue to tear at the country, or that else one night I might receive a visit from a certain acquiantance. So, when I could walk without pain, I boarded a ship bound for the Eastern Harbour.

                Why there, I can’t explain in this letter. Suffice it to say that I obtained at the Barrows certain pieces of information that I needed to discuss with those in the know about such matters. I did get hold of a few helpful people — a Void Knight officer, some sailors who were familiar with the islands of the Southern Sea, a few other individuals— but I have nothing so definitive as to draw any conclusions.

                Forgive my secretiveness. When I have something certain to report, I’ll let you know at the first opportunity.

                I didn’t stay at the harbour for long either. My health had taken a turn for the worse again, and I couldn’t take the constant hassle and noise of the port. I considered but decided against travelling to Rellekka, opting instead to return to Misthalin.

                This is where I have been since. As for what I have been up to, the answer is _nothing._ On top of the injuries I suffered at the Barrows, my old wyrd-poisoning has been playing up again, which has forced me to take things easy. So, I’ve lived as my allowance permits me (which is not badly at all), working on my research and catching up on my reading (the mansion library is treasure-trove of rare books). I make small repairs around the house. I take refreshing walks in the woods west of Silvarea. I’ve written a few more chapters of my memoir and brushed up my Infernal with my housemate.

                And until something of note happens, I’ll do as my fellow Guardians of Guthix have advised me — stay put,  bide my time, and take care of my health. When you receive this letter, hopefully I’ll be where I am now, with a hearty fire blazing in the hearth and the windows shut tight against the east wind.

                I’ll let you know when I have more to tell and remain your friend,

                Aileen Westbrook, Mistress of Gulvas Mansion.

                P.S. Little of note has happened in all this time, but a few weeks ago I received some interesting news: as the autumn has been longer than usual, the Senntisten dig site has not been covered up for winter yet. For a few years now, little has been found there, but at the turn of the month they came across something — an entrance to a massive, underground hall, believed to be of immense historical significance. As I write this, the cave is being emptied of debris, and should soon be ready to be properly studied. I look forward to it.

 


	17. What You Shouldn't Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the eclipse. I started this before Sliske's Endgame came out, and then discarded it. Having finished the quest I tweaked it a bit, and now everything fits together.

           

            It was already past eight o’clock when the light of the rising sun crept through the diamond-paned windows of Gulvas Mansion. In the library of the west wing, it pooled on the dusty floorboards, where it slid on like continental ice. As it progressed, it revealed — in order of contact — a Kharidian carpet thick enough to wade in, a scattered assortment of scribbled-over papers, and several piles of ancient books with faded leather covers. There was an uncapped vial of ink and a discarded phoenix-feather quill. There was a crooked, dusty bottle, mostly empty, and a crystal glass with an amber tint to its inside. Finally, against the far wall of the room, there was a mattress buried under what looked like a foot-high heap of quilts. Then — like a volcano shuddering before it erupts — the heap shifted, and the daylight hit Aileen square in the face.

            One of the habits she had developed over her traveling years was what she thought of as the wake-up check-up. Upon waking up, she’d instantly review in her head where she was, how she had gotten there, and how great a danger she likely was in. This morning, the answers were the same as they had been for over a month, ever since she had come back from Freneskae. _You’re at Gulvas Mansion. You went to sleep here as you do every night. You’re safe. You’re home._

            Safe. Home.

            Still half-asleep, eyes watering in the sunlight, Aileen sat up and inspected her surroundings. Last night’s log fire had long since turned to cold ash, and she drew the blankets tightly around herself. Frost-ferns covered the windows. Icicles as long as jousting rapiers hung from the eaves. Even without looking, she knew that there had been another snowfall during the night. One of these days, someone would have to get on the roof and clear off the snowbanks amassed there. And since the hundred-year-old timber beams could not be trusted to take the weight of the other occupant of Gulvas Mansion, that someone would be Aileen Westbrook.

            One of these days, but not today.

            Today, first she’d shovel clear the front stairs, all three flights of them. Then she’d give a second coat of varnish to the big dining room table. After that, while there was still plenty of light, she’d get on with sewing a new winter tunic, a replacement for the burned one. At six o’clock, not a minute sooner, she’d declare the sun to be over the yardarm, and retire to the study with her paperwork and something from Ormod’s  cellars. First, she’d draft a list of the following day’s jobs. Then she’d write until midnight, or until the liquor ran out. She never fetched a second bottle.

            It was a good routine. It kept her busy. It left her little time to think.

            The winter — Freneskae and everything after it — was a haze. One night in Novtumber she had half-heard, half-felt in her head the familiar voice of Kharshai, carried over by Lunar magic. Ten days later, she had stumbled back to Gielinor through the World Gate, covered in ash and bruises and blood. It had been early morning in western Kandarin, evening in Misthalin, and everything had been blue and white and very still. On Old Silvarea Road an astonished workman from the Senntisten dig had stuttered an answer to her question about the date, and had then insisted on seeing her home. In the basement scullery —the only place where the plumbing still worked — she had washed it all off in the steaming tub, and had ever since acted as if the whole affair had never happened.

            The days blended into each other. The nights always ended the same. In the morning she’d wake up amid a mess of papers, the last notes on them often only just legible. If the bottle beside her bed was empty, she’d rarely be able to make sense of what she had written. If it was not, she’d at least remember what the detached, incoherent words had been about.

            Today, three quarters of the Port were gone. There had been something about names and the importance of what people called you, and then she had shoved the cork back in and gone to sleep. It had been something about not forgetting.

            The last piece of paper —the last thing Aileen could remember writing — was under the ink vial. Cursing her own carelessness, she quickly screwed the stopper on the container, and then picked up the scrawled-over sheet. It was a list, but its meaning refused to come back to her.

            _Aileen Westbrook,_ it read.

            _Ailin Jónsdóttir_

_Aileen Westbrook, World Guardian_

_Aileen World Guardian_

_World Guardian_

_Aileen Gielinor_

And finally, as a key to interpret the ditty,

            _Harold Death, Esquire._

And that was what it had been all about. She had been thinking about the job, and about becoming the job, and about the point where you ceased to be a person and turned into a function. At the time, the thought had been clear and exact and perfect, the way all her thoughts were three quarters through a bottle of Port.

            They had talked about it years ago, hadn’t they, shortly after the Citadel? What had he said? That he held on to “Harold” and the later-acquired “Esquire” for a reason. Most people he encountered of course called him by his title, but that didn’t mean _he_ was going to call _himself by_ it. You couldn’t forget your name, he had said. No matter how much you changed, no matter how much time passed, you couldn’t forget your name, because… _why?_

            Aileen had listened, but she had not understood at the time. It had been less than six months after the Chambers, and certain things had not yet sunk in. She had thought he had been talking about himself.

            Last night, somewhere between the fourth and the fifth drink, she had remembered their conversation. He had talked about names. Then he had said something else, and the memory of his words had elicited another. It had been about Freneskae, something important, something that had nagged at the edge of her mind. And then she had taken three long gulps straight out the bottle, shoved the cork back in, and gone to sleep.

            Right now, it could not be helped. And at any rate, Aileen needed to get started with her work. She reached between the sheets to pull out a purple silk dressing gown, ransacked from Ingram’s wardrobe, and tied it tightly over her nightshirt. Then, braving the cold, she slipped out of bed, into her slippers, and out into the corridor.

            Individual rooms in the mansion could be kept tolerably warm, the halls could be not. Every morning, she made the dash down hallways and stairs, breath steaming, all the while cursing stone walls and open  fireplaces and leaky early-Fifth Age windows with her whole heart — until she reached the safety of the basement kitchen, where the walls retained heat uncannily. As always, an ember or two still remained in the stove, and soon she had a fire going. By the time the kettle was on, she was thinking about nothing except fried eggs and wood varnish.

            She had breakfast. She downed the morning's dosage of her antidote. She washed in the scullery. She made another sprint back to the study-library suite and got dressed. Then she gathered up her books and papers and the crooked, dusty bottle, and deposited the lot on Ingram’s desk. Then she put on her fur cloak, grabbed a shovel from the vestibule, and pushed open Gulvas Mansion’s front door.  

            It was a dry, clear, midwinter’s day, and the freezing wind hit her like a whip. The entire world was covered in soft, heavy, diamond-bright snow that turned the familiar view into a strange, gently distorted dream. Up in the sky, the pure, blue-white winter sky, the moon hung low, not five nights from full.

            Five nights to full. Five nights to total eclipse.

            And while she stared into the white nothingness, she remembered what she had finally allowed herself to recall last night, while thinking about her conversation with Death: She had spent ten days on Freneskae. She had not eaten once during that entire time. She had not needed water. She had not slept.

            What was the other thing that Harold had said? That while Guardians could be killed —some more easily than others — none of them had ever died of old age. And that the longer they all lived, the less they resembled other beings of their species. The less they became like ordinary mortals.

            _“It starts with small things,”_ he had said. _“The first hundred years are the hardest.”_

            Small things. Not needing food. Not needing sleep. Eventually, the small things would turn into bigger ones.

            “ _No matter how much you change, no matter how much time passes, you can’t forget your name, because often that will be all that remains of who you once were. Your body will change. It will look different. It will feel different.It will adapt and metamorphose, and it will learn to live off your powers. The people you have known will die, and their children and grandchildren will die, and soon there will be no-one who knew you as a human. The country you grew up in will be swallowed by an empire, or destroyed in a disaster. Maybe your people will disappear. But when everything else is gone, if you still have your name, you will still have a way to remember what it was like to be a mortal. Why should you? So you don’t take to resenting them.”_

            Aileen considered all this. She tried not to imagine the bigger things. She tried to not imagine the changes. There were bones in the future, and flickering lights, and deep liquid shadows with minds of their own. She could sense it all, in the light of the gibbous moon and her lingering dreams and the sharp smell of ice. For a moment she tensed, as if bracing herself against it. And then, because someone had to do it, she bent down and stuck her shovel in the snow.

 

 

 


	18. "A minute, Please"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Sliske's Endgame. This is my first attempt to fill in certain plot holes and unanswered questions in the quest.

               “A minute, please, friends. I’ve business to finish here. Come to think of it, you could accompany me, if you want to.”

               “We will,” said Icthlarin.

               “We will,” I echoed.

               “Good. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. With your permission, Aileen—” I nodded before Harold could finish the sentence, and in a burst of blue fire, the twilit desert encampment disappeared.

               I knew where we were before my eyes adjusted to the dark. How could I not have recognized the sepulchral smell of the air, the whistling echo of the subterranean wind? _Whispers. Shadows. Somewhere in the primordial night, crystalline lights like the eyes of a mad god. Why did you bring me back here?_ _Fear. Escape! Escape! Escape!_

               Then I saw the glowing things and I knew what we had come for. They both lay still on the ground, a few feet apart from each other. One a wreckage of painted wood, the other a pile of dry bones and crumbling cloth. They were broken, but their souls were bright and intact. There was a click, a flash of light, and the blade of Death’s scythe was open.

               Before he began, he hovered in front of them for a while, and had he been anyone else, I might have thought that he was gloating. Then, like any man who on a hard day’s night has one more job to do before he can go home, he got on with it.

               The mannequin was first. It was a clean cut, and the greenish flame seemed to vanish in Harold’s palm.

               When he stopped above the pile of bones, he hesitated for a second. He said nothing, but for a few terrible seconds his eyes narrowed with infinite rage, and his fleshless knuckles tightened around the scythe’s curved handle. But just as soon, and without any one of us uttering a sound, his body relaxed again. The blade rose high, and in a single, swift sweep it cut the soul from the body. Before it disappeared, he held it in front of his face and whispered a few words to it. I could not make them out entirely, but the name he addressed the flickering thing by was not “ _Nomad.”_

               “I’m done,” Harold said, turning back to us. “Let us leave. It’s time these two are taken across the River. We’ll accompany you to the shore.” The last words were spoken to Icthlarin.

               As the three of us walked out of the world of the living, I held on to the jackal-headed god’s arm for support. In that desolate place, the warmth and the faint smell of unwashed dog felt comforting. Slowly, the cave faded, and right before everything turned to mist, I felt something crush under my foot, something hard and brittle—

               Rubble. I didn’t have to look. Crumbling, dry stone rubble, scattered on the cave’s floor.

               And then we were gone.


	19. The Scent of a Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written as a response to a request on tumblr.
> 
> After the events of Endgame, Aileen has to pay a call.

            After Noumenon, there was one more visit I had to make. He ought to know, I reckoned, and for reasons that had more to do with my own conscience than with him, I wanted to be the one to deliver the news. Besides, I wasn’t certain that anyone else was going to bother.

            When I resurfaced in the desert, somewhere on the outskirts of the town, the eclipse was almost over, and the world remained in half-light, all black shadows and golden afterglow. No people seemed to be about, and in the dream-like silence, the only sounds were my footsteps and the play of a distant fountain.

            “I was hoping I might run into you.”

            No people had seemed to be about.

           

***

           

            “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

            “Yes,” I said.

            “Good,” Wahisietel replied.

            Once more, we were sitting on chairs set by his desk, in the larger of the two rooms of the last house to the north. The place —ubiquitous books, whitewashed walls, the smell of tobacco and mint— hadn’t changed. Its owner, however, had. In the two years since I had seen him in his human form, old age had crept up on his disguise at last. His face was thinner, the creases around his eyes deeper, his hair more white than grey. What’s more, there was something in his voice, something in his manner that made him look tired —infinitely tired and worn, as if whatever had sustained him throughout the long years had evaporated. Very soon, before the neighbours began to ask and worry, he’d have to move on. With his forced exile over, where would he go? I wanted to know, but before that there were other things.

            I waited for a few seconds to see if he'd continue, but the single word had covered everything he had to say about his brother’s death.

            “Did you sense it?” I asked.

            “No,” he said. “I haven’t been able to feel his presence in years, not since he acquired the Stone. And even before that, he had his ways of hiding. But I knew.” By now, he was not looking at me anymore, but seemed to be speaking to himself. “I watched the proceedings from a nearby hill, from one of the pillars. There was a flash of light, then a blast of energy that nearly knocked me down, and for a bit the earth shook so hard I feared the cave would collapse. Made short work of the camp, in any case. But when it was over I saw the gods begin to reappear — they came as if a veil had fallen, as if whatever had hidden them had ceased to be. And then I saw you step out of thin air. That’s when I knew.”

            “You knew only one of us would come out alive.” I murmured.

            “Correct.”

            I tried to laugh and managed a smile. It was indescribably relieving to speak to him, I had forgotten how relieving, to speak to someone incapable of any kind of sentimentality, someone devoid of conceit, someone I knew would neither moralize nor judge me, no more than I judged him — and I wanted to tell him all that. Still smiling, I leaned over the table, when suddenly he looked up at me, and blood fled from his face. Before I could react, with a speed that belied his age, he had sprung up and grabbed me, and was sniffing me like a wild animal.

            _Hair, face, neck, the way Zamorak had smelled Khazard on Freneskae —_

            Then, as abruptly, he shoved me away, sending me flying into the wall —

            —And the world exploded in sharp shapes and pain.

            _My ribs._ My bad ribs, the ones that had—

            _“You!”_ A word or a growl, I couldn’t tell — pain, I couldn’t breathe for the pain as I tried to scramble back —

            “Wa—” No more Ali. A Mahjarrat, tear-distorted, all eight feet of him, face contorted with rage, fire smouldering in both long-clawed hands. _My ribs—_

            _“His smell! You smell of him!”_ Infernal.

 _“I foudt hib,”_ I screamed, or tried to, struggling to sit up. In a final insult of banal indignity, the knock had dislodged a clot, and blood was streaming out of my nose onto Wahisietel’s clean-swept dirt floor. Someone would have to do something about it later. “I foudt against hib, for the lub of Bah!!”

            _“And you lived?”_ There was nothing familiar about the voice. Nothing familiar about the frozen face towering above me, still as a mask. His fingers curled around the flames. I had known him for years, and I had never seen him like this. Not when he fought Lucien. Not when the dragonkin had stormed the Ritual site. Not on Freneskae. I had never seen him afraid.

            “Apparedtly!” I spat out the word, blood flying from my bit tongue. “Agh you tryig to chage that?”

            _“Your smell. Not your physical smell. The other one. The other sense of smell.”_ And then, through the shock and the agony and tears and the blood on my face, it dawned on me what he meant. The other sense of smell. The one by which Mahjarrat recognized each other, or each other’s tracks. The scent of a life-force. The scent of a shadow.

            “Wahisiedl,” I whispered. I had to try and inhale, just enough to get out the next sentence — “It’s be. It’s be, Aileed. Wahisiedl —sobethig happened back there.”

 


	20. There's Something I Wanted to Ask You about

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Endgame and right after "A Minute, Please."  
> Aileen and Harold have a chat.

_”Harold.”_

_”Aileen?”_

_”There’s something I wanted to ask you about. I didn’t want to earlier on, back in—”_

_“It’s alright. You can speak now. We´re alone. And believe me, no-one shows up at my office without my knowledge.”_

_“I know. But tell me. Tell me —Harold, you see people’s souls, right? Or sense them?”_

_“I do.”_

_“Then how much do you see? What can you tell about a soul? You mentioned back in there that you could sense people’s deaths.”_

_“I can see or sense —either one will do, although neither is an entirely adequate analogy — the soul. I can see how strong it is. How alive, how developed. I can sense the moment of a soul’s death, though what I see of the event is rarely comprehensible. The last moments of mortal lives are usually not spent in conscious or verbal thought…I tend to catch impressions of physical sensations, emotional states, little more.”_

_“Can you see injuries?”_

_“Explain.”_

_“Can you see injuries? Wounds? Can you see if a soul has been harmed, not morally or, or emotionally, but harmed—”_

_“Harmed like yours was, Aileen?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I can. Although it’s unusual.”_

_“But you can. Then tell me, Harold, can you see my soul?”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Is there anything wrong with it? Tell me, look at it, and tell me what you see.”_

_“I’m looking at it right now. It’s strong. Bright. Your powers are intermingled with it, but they’re still identifiable as something separate and alien.”_

_“Anything else?”_

_“There is something.”_

_“What?”_

_“It’s too early to tell. I’ve so rarely seen anything like it.”_

_“What is it? Just tell me. Describe.”_

_“It’s hard to explain in mortal terms. Your soul, as you know, was damaged back in Bennath. A part of it was torn away. And as you know, it’s entirely possible that you received something in return.”_

_“Go on.”_

_“There is an anomaly in it, Aileen. And an injury to the spirit can heal as irregularly as an injury to the body. The…feel of it, the feel of your wound, for the want of a better word, has changed over time.”_

_“Yes?”_

_“The abnormality, as I see it as we speak — it could be something akin to scar tissue. A part of a healing process, the soul’s attempt to repair itself. That. Or— though this is mostly speculation.”_

_“It could be either that, or what! Harold! Harold. I apologize. I shouldn’t have — please continue.”_

_“What I was going to say, Aileen, is that it could be a scar of sorts. Or something else.”_

_“Yes. Please. What else?”_

_“A graft.”_


	21. Auxiliary Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harold and Aileen discuss the strange phenomenon mentioned in 'What You Shouldn't Forget.'  
> Set soon after the previous chapter, right before the beginning of year five of the Sixth Age.

               “I know you have been to Dorgesh-Kaan,” Harold said. “Did you ever see the power station in the caves outside the city?

               “I’ve been to there a few times,” I told him. “Fascinating place to those who understand anything about it.”

               Once again, we were sitting together at his office, Harold on his usual seat, I on a huge, empty hourglass by his desk. After the meeting of the Guardians, I had taken to dropping by — sometimes because I had questions to ask, sometimes to report on the movements of my suddenly acquired companion, sometimes for the company. He didn’t seem to mind.

               For a place that technically existed outside time — for a house that floated weightlessly amid swirling vortices of gas and stardust; a house that sported a backdoor that opened to the Underworld, and whose stained-glass windows depicted the death of its master — it was quite cosy. I felt at ease there.

               “But you know what I’m talking about,” Harold said. “And do not worry, I shall keep this simple, if only because I know very little about the topic myself. It is not very closely connected to my field of work, except in a few unfortunate cases. Wet hands. Rodents gnawing the insulation. You can imagine it.”

               “I prefer not to.”

               “It’s very clean, actually. Very quick. They’re always very surprised to see me.”

               “I can believe that, Harold.”

               “ _But,_ ” he continued, “as you probably know, there are two generators there. The primary one, which produces the city’s electricity, and an auxiliary one, which is used should the first one for whatever reason fail. I think this is what happened to you.”

               “In the sense that?”

               “In the sense that, Aileen, your body runs exactly as it always has. It needs food and air, and in a complex process it uses these to produce the energy to function. What happened to you on Freneskae — your main generator ran out of fuel. Your auxiliary generator was switched on.”

               “Guthix’s gift.”

               “Exactly,” Harold said, and for a while he searched for words. “But that metaphor only extends so far. In general, you could say that whenever you fail to protect your body, or when you fail to feed it, or whenever you are in a situation or conditions where a normal human would die… the power kicks in.”

               “Was it the same for you?” I asked.

               “No,” he replied, without hesitation. “I died at once, and I died fully human. When I woke up, I was a thing part soul, part godly power, with no body…so I assumed a form that seemed fit for the purpose. It is different for you. It is different for all of us.”

               There seemed to be something else he wanted to say, but was holding back. There often were such moments between us, whenever he discussed Guthix or his fellow Guardians, and I knew better than to press him. If he wanted to tell, he would.

               “So,” I began tentatively, “In the…during the…in the cave, my powers — they switched themselves on because I was under an unbearable attack.”

               “That is my theory,” Harold said.

               “Because I would have died otherwise.”

               “Yes,” he replied. “Your powers, which unlike mine, are something somewhat separate from you or your soul — and which only seem to be partially under your control — protected your body.”

               I could hear him but only peripherally, already lost in thought. My recollections of the last moments in the cave were not as much hazy as they were fragmented; a series of tableaux and flashing images that seemed to have little to do with me. The staff. The fight. His face, its final frozen rictus. Dust, dust in the cold wind...I could recall the feeling of all pain and sensation vanishing, all exhaustion disappearing, the strength that was not my own but which somehow moved my muscles without tearing them from my bones — _Did I even breathe? Did I breathe throughout that time? —_ The long, dreamlike afterglow, the fantastic lightness; the final, indignant collapse at Wahisietel’s house. I had slept for a day, and the following evening I had woken up feeling like warmed-over mincemeat.

               Then Harold's voice forced me to snap out of my reverie.

               “There is something about it that I should point out,” he said. “If my theory is correct, then what should follow is this: the more your body fails — the worse it is injured, or the less you feed it or take care of it, the more your powers take over.” He let that sink in for a few seconds. “The less human you become.”

               “And the more…” I let the sentence trail off.

               “I do not know,” he replied. “As I said, it works differently for all of us. But less human and more…immortal. The more something else. Hence, if you wish to hold on to your humanity while it is possible, look after yourself. Stay safe. Avoid damage.”

               I didn’t point out that I had no habit of intentionally seeking out injury. Instead, I asked him one more question.

               “If I was under the attack _from the inside…_ do you think —do you think it would protect me? Could it eject —?” I didn’t want to say the name.

               “Perhaps,” Harold said. He was staring at my forehead, an inch or so above my eyes, as if he was trying to look at whatever was inside my head. I didn’t ask what he saw. I didn’t want to know what it looked like. “We will have to wait and see,” he continued, as if to himself. “But that is a possibility.”


	22. New Year's Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin.

                When the doorbell rang, I had already retired to my bedroom in the library.

                I was in the process of stoking the fire for the night —a dark, chill, midwinter one— when suddenly the bell clanged in the hall, its reverberations carrying and echoing through the ancient walls of Gulvas Mansion.

                As I froze in front of the hearth, the immediate question that sprang to my mind was not who could it be at this time of the night, but who did I know who at this time of the night would bother to ring the doorbell. By this point, I mostly associated with people who either contacted me through various enchanted items, invaded my thoughts using different branches of magic, or who simply barged or teleported in without a moment’s notice. I was used to all those things. I was not used to the doorbell.

                By this point, I also expected by default that most people who approached me would be enemies. But which ones? Which ones this time? The door, I knew, was perfectly secure against anything non-magical, and perfectly useless against anything occult. In addition, most of the weapons I had at hand were good against anything non-magical, and perfectly useless against anything occult, but you have to make do with what you’ve got. So, before I slipped into the dark corridor, I took a candelabra from the desk, and after a moment’s hesitation, the poker.

                Then I crept in candlelight through the halls of an old manor in my nightgown.

                The great hall, diamond-paned windows, foyer, door. Bolt. Lock. The creak of antique hinges —

                _“Westbrook!”_

_“Captain Rovin! What has happened?!”_

“What’s happened, Aileen, it’s New Year’s Eve! Say, what’s the poker for?”

                “I took you for someone else. But what are _you_ doing here, and who are all those people down there on the road?”

                “They’re, oh — there’s me and some men from the Palace Guard, and Lord Fitzharmon and all his sons who’ve come home, and old Doc Harlow, and the wizard Aubury from the rune shop, and that chap Doctor Balando and some of the dig site people, don’t know most of them, and Mistress Aris, and Old Man Paldock who lives in the quarry, and a couple of the beacon guards…”

                “But what are they all doing here?!”

                “What you do on New Year’s Eve, Westbrook? Celebrating! I sent one of the lads to Paterdomus to fetch the priest, too. And Squire and Blaze, they’ve got fireworks! They bought a crate of chemicals from a chap who was with the circus last month, most of them probably illegal to be honest, and they say they’ve cooked up something for the new age — we’re going to Quarry Hill to shoot the lot up. Oh, and Aris told me I ought to say she brought the ‘tiny menace,’ whatever that is.”

                People. Humans. Almost entirely non-magical humans, who save for one or two had nothing to do with…nothing to do with any of the things I had to do with. And they wanted me to come with them. Come with them on an _outing._ Didn’t they know how dangerous that was? Someone had to be sensible here.

                “I’ve already changed into my night clothes, Rovin.”

                “Have you? _Then go back and change into your day clothes, Westbrook, you big idiot!”_

                ***

                It was ten minutes later.

                Cold winter air, blocked by the thick fur of my cloak. Icy stairs, torchlight, cracking snow, people. People I had not seen for years, people who had known me as one of Mrs Whitby’s lodgers, people I had seen as dead versions of themselves in another dimension…and not a god or a Mahjarrat in sight.

                Firecrackers, hissing sparks, tiny flashes of light in the heart of the winter. Light to coax the sun to come back. As I stepped into their glow, someone noticed me, and suddenly—

                _“Aileen!”_

_“Westbrook, good to see you!”_

_“Aileen, how do you do, I believe you’ve met all my children—”_

_“ARGH!”_

                Still not a Mahjarrat in sight, this one didn’t count. Nothing that can sit on your shoulder and wrap itself in the fur of your collar counts. Humans. People. Friends. They were all around me, and there was nothing to tell that I was not one of them. If I had said anything, who would have cared? We all had our problems. And so, with our sparklers and torches driving away the night, we all headed together for Quarry Hill.


	23. Bennath, Year Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place a few months after "New Year's Eve" and the events of Endgame.
> 
> Written in January, 2018.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to try something different this time: pretentious, overlong sentences. Feedback is welcome.

           On a morning in Bennath, having finished washing in the rust-coloured water the master bathroom’s tap discharged in short, retching gushes, I looked up to find myself face to face with my own reflection.

            It had been a long time since I had been confronted by my own face. While I would catch sight of it intermittently, in a window at night or in the oil in an iron skillet, the vision was never clear, never more than a shade in dark glass. And save for the few but tormenting occasions when I had taken a replication in the windowpane for an intruder outside, I paid no mind to it.

            That morning, however, I had happened to glance into Ingram’s old mirror when something in the sight, plain in the glare of two wall-mounted oil lamps, made me pause. My hand, frozen halfway towards a towel, fell back to the edge of the sink, and I stopped to take inventory of the forgotten thing I had found.

            It was the face of a woman whose body, long suffering, had finally divested itself of the last traces of youth. I could not tell when the change had taken place, but at some point during the past two years, the last remains of softness in both flesh and expression had melted away, leaving me with the final, undisguised form of my face. What was looking back at me from the glass, with all the stillness and severity of an Icyenic statue, was myself with everything excessive, everything tender, everything decorative gone.

            I had returned to Gulvas Mansion shortly after the eclipse. A month later, around my thirty-eighth birthday, I had sealed off for good the wine cellar I had spent the previous year draining. Like most drunkards who quit drinking, I had regained my clarity of mind. Unlike most of them, I had not regained my appetite. My body revolted against everything I tried to feed it. I had learned to not try its patience. By now, a trick of the light was enough to turn me into a corpse: In the shadows cast by the brow over the eye-sockets and the dark crescents underneath, in the sharp edge of a cheekbone and the hollow across a cheek, I could discern the outline of my skull.

            The substructure had healed; the surface remained damaged. The Kharidian doctor in Burgh de Rott, there to train Morytanian herbalists, had done a good job setting my nose. It neither ran nor wheezed, the profile was more or less the same, but no medic in the world could have done anything about the horizontal welt across the bridge. The Barrows had left me with a whole collection of those bar fighter’s scars, thin, deep cuts across the brow and malars, where every night long-healed fractures haunted me.

            Then there was the damned familiarity of the things. I had recognised it as soon as the swelling had subsided, but had been unable to locate its origin. When the answer had eventually hit me, I had howled with laughter until the pain in my ribs had made me scream. I had seen the same marks before, on the face of an Asgarnian mercenary in a different Burgh de Rott, where in another life the two of us had whiled away the days of starvation and trench foot by fornicating in an abandoned shed.

            In the spring of year five, the Asgarnian was long dead. Burgh de Rott was a tentatively thriving little port town. Nothing lived under the Barrows anymore.

            I, on the other hand, was alive; winter-pale, emaciated, scarred, but alive; deathless and half-dead at thirty-eight.

            But the water was cooling my skin already, and the icy draught from under the door was beginning to make me shiver. I picked up the towel, turned away from the mirror, and began to pat myself dry.

***

            Winter had finally given way to the season of mud. The unpaved road from Silvarea’s gate to Paterdomus had become a sinking, brown, mire, with a sluggish, silvery stream flowing down the middle carrying yesteryear’s leaves and floats of opaque ice. A month ago it had been fit for a sleigh; a month from now on, it would again be fit for a cart. In the meantime, the only passable path was offered by the trampled snowbanks still lingering on the side of the road.

            After a dark, hazy dawn the day had turned out bright; the sky a washed-watercolour blue, the air full of the frantic dripping of brilliant, melting icicles. It was two weeks since the last snowfall, and while I no longer had to worry about keeping the staircase cleared, I still came out every morning, if only to pretend I could feel the sun. I had been there for a while and was about to return indoors, when by chance I noticed the figure approaching along the snowbank.

            Despite the layers of cloaks and the scarf wrapped around his lower face, the wayfarer was recognisable at once, if only because no-one else in Silvarea moved on skis. The flattened snow offered little traction, but he was double-poling forward all the more resolutely and with such concentration that I saw him long before he saw me. I waited until he was nearly in front of the stairs before calling out:

            _“Ivan!”_

            While my voice echoed around the gorge, the skier looked up and raised a mitten-clad hand in greeting. Then, with some deliberation he managed to manoeuvre himself around, and half-pushed, half-slid across the mire of mud to my side of the road. Then Ivan’s skis were standing in the snow and he was up the stairs, leaping two steps at a time for all his robes and position, and at once I was embracing him as tightly as I had years ago, at the bridge below the Paterdomus.

***

            Ten minutes later we were sitting in the library, two mugs of tea steaming between us on the desk. There had been no formalities exchanged, no attempt at pleasantries on either part. Ivan sipped his tea, warming his hands against the porcelain while he studied my face. Whatever conclusion he reached, it probably was more merciful, if less well-informed than the one I had come to that morning. When he spoke at last, it was in the same soft, level manner he addressed all his parishioners, the one I recognised he had picked up from Drezel.

            “How have you been, Aileen?” Coming from him, the question was not a civility, and it did not anticipate a civility for an answer. He knew what I was and what had happened to me; he knew not only about the wine cellar and the wyrd poison, but about the Barrows, and about what had happened during the eclipse. Out of the last one, though, I had omitted the last two dreadful scenes. There was no need to drag him into all that. Not because I thought it too much for him, but because he came from another part of my life, and I wanted to keep that part separate from the whole wretched business. He knew nothing of what slept inside the earth. He knew nothing of what was watching him from within me.

            “I’ve been thinking about leaving,” I said.

            I had spoken the words mechanically, and only once they were out I realised the partial truth in them. Strictly speaking, I had not been thinking about leaving. What I had done was realise that it was _necessary_ that I leave. I had been aware of the thought in its unnamed form, but this was the first time I had put it to words.

            “You mean leave Gulvas Mansion,” Ivan replied. He was not asking a question.

            “Leave the mansion. Leave Silvarea,” I said. “Maybe leave Misthalin. I have to. I can’t stay here any longer, avoiding…avoiding and waiting to be called. I can’t. If I stay, I’ll sooner or later open up the cellar again, and that’s not even the worst of it. I have to go before I …before…” Suddenly the thought was too much, and I finished the sentence with a broad sweep of my hand as if to swat it away, trying to indicate any and all the possibilities I did not want to voice and nearly knocking over Ivan’s teacup in the process.

            “Before you give up on living,” he said. He was good at it, the parish-priest business. It was almost a shame there were so few of us.

            “Living,” I replied. “Staying human.”

            “And where do you plan to go?” Ivan asked, sidestepping around the topic he knew terrified me the most.

            “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s more a matter of crossing out the places I won’t be going.” Not Varrock, too close. Not Falador ever again. Not anywhere in Kandarin. Not Al-Kharid or the Desert, not until it would be inevitable.

            “You’re not planning to return to Rellekka?”

            “I can’t,” I said. “Or I could, strictly speaking, but I can’t continue to do that to my…people who…my in-laws. I can’t go in and out of their lives like that, coming and going as if…” I made another involuntary attempt at the teacup’s life. “You know, Auda…Stían’s youngest sister, she has never forgiven me for running away that first time? Not really. She won’t say it, but… and do you know, I don’t have the right to blame her. I don’t. I abandoned her. She lost first her brother and then me, when _she_ had been the one to love me the best...and now every time I come back and then leave again…” I let the sentence trail off. It had occurred to me just then that I had gone in and out of young Ivan’s life just as much, and that my first appearance in it had cost him two members of all the family he had ever known.

            If his thoughts had travelled around the same track, however, he never let it show. There was no bitterness or resentment in Father Ivan Strom; he had too much strength of character, that same quiet, incomprehensible resilience I had recognised and envied in both Vídar and Bergdis, and which neither I nor Stían nor Auda had ever possessed.

            “I can see what you mean,” he said. “Although for my conscience I have to point out that while I’ve never met your family, I believe that they’d rather see you briefly than not at all.”

            “That’s not…” I began, and then caught up to the fact that there was no reasonable way to end the statement. “I’ll go back,” I tried again, “I’ll go back when I know that I can stay at least for a while, and when I know I’ll have the time to warn them, to tell them that I have to leave…instead of simply being gone one morning all over again.”

            “That is understandable,” Ivan said, “and not unreasonable, I think.”

            I didn’t know what to say, and at any rate I didn’t want to say more. It was one more thing I did not need to drag Ivan into, no matter how readily he listened to me. To get away from it, I switched the subject to my immediate plan. I would inform my fellow Guardians of Guthix of my movements, I assured him. Did he still have the slayer gem I had given him, in case something turned up in Silvarea? He did. And he would not hesitate to call me if anything happened? He would not. As for anyone else who might want to find me, they had ways to contact me wherever I was.

             “I’ll start out someplace familiar,” I said. “I’ll say goodbye to my friends in Varrock. Spend some time at Fitzharmon Hall with Dimintheis. Maybe visit Port Sarim, see how things are there. Something will turn up.”

            “It probably will,” Ivan said, and for all I would have deserved it, there was no mockery in his voice.

***

            By the time Ivan left, the sun had climbed a few degrees higher in the watercolour sky. On the open door’s threshold, rewrapping the last of his wool scarves, he asked me one more question.

            “You haven’t thought about returning to Morytania?”

            The question came out of nowhere. I had thought the matter long settled, though for different reasons than what he might have assumed.

            “No,” I said. “No, I have not.”

            “They are making great strides,” he said, as if trying to convince me the danger was over. “You wouldn’t recognise Meiyerditch the way it is now. Or Port Phasmatys. Of course, I understand if you don’t want to go back.”

            I said nothing. I could not say anything, not without giving myself away. Instead, I offered him a quick, tight hug, inhaled the smell of damp wool, and then he was on the stairs again, on his skis, and poling away along the treacherous, thawing snow at the edge of the river of mud.

            I stayed at the landing, watching after his retreating figure until it became indistinguishable from the leafless trees.

            I could not have said anything, not without giving myself away. Let Ivan believe that I kept away from Morytania because of the atrocities I had witnessed in Meiyerditch and Darkmeyer, or because of what had happened at the Barrows. What I could not say to his face, or to anyone in the world, was that I did not want to go back because I wanted to keep my memories of the place as it had been before the revolution.

            Not because there had been anything worth preserving about the old order — let the Abyss have it and all its horrors — but because I had been young there once, young and human; cold, ravenous, degraded, but alive in a way I had not been since and never would be again.

            I had been free for the last time on the castle roof, free of my old debt as much as it is possible to be free of such a thing, my work finished, my obligations dissolved. And everything that tied me to that Morytania, Drakan’s Morytania — the brand on my hand, the wyrd-venom in my veins, the matter-of-fact ghost my scars evoked — tied me back, in some tender and perverse way, to everything I had lost since then.

            So, let Burgh de Rott be rebuilt and stay serviced by an army of Kharidian doctors; let every rotting hovel in Meiyerditch be torn down; let the wastelands of Mort Myre be drained, tilled, and ploughed for fields; I would rejoice but stay away.

            So not Morytania, no. Nor Rellekka, nor Ardougne, nor Varrock — I was tracing my oldest itinerary, even if I refused to name its initial point — none of those, and not Morytania. That country no longer existed.

            Instead, I let my mind wander to another place, to a harbour and the prospect of a ship. I was thinking of blank spaces on a map, of a mast swaying against stars I could not name, of a strange shore emerging from luminescent mist, and of the road, which in a month’s time would be fit for travel again.


	24. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter.
> 
> Written in November, 2016.

                When I opened my eyes, I was no longer alone.

                My legs are not what they used to be, and on the way down from the mountain lake I had sat down to rest on a rock. It appeared I had dozed off, for the gentle afternoon was already gone, and the sun hung low and red over the western horizon.

                Strangely enough, I wasn’t cold.

                I greeted the two of them as one greets old friends, but it still took me a few seconds to understand the reason for their presence. When it hit me, I looked down to see my suspicion confirmed.

                “Well, then,” I said. “I was thinking this might happen soon. When you’re ready, Harold.” At my feet, the thing I had lived in for two hundred years lay cold and still. For all its scars and white hair, it looked oddly young.

                Then something blue and icy flashed in the air, and I wasn’t bound to it anymore.

                “Thank you,” I said, standing up. I had forgotten what it was like to move without pain. Death merely nodded, like any working man who knows he’s done a good job. “I believe this is goodbye,” I continued. “And I wanted to say that it’s been an honour to work with you.”

                “Likewise,” he replied, and we shook hands on it.

                Then I turned to his companion.

                “I take it that you’ll take it from here?” I asked.

                “I will,” the jackal-headed god answered, and together we walked out of the fading world.

                Somewhere during the journey across the mist-covered bridge I asked my guide (without pausing, I would not pause now):

                “What’s on the other side?” And he replied:

                “I have been asked the same question countless times, and countless times I have given the same answer: I don’t know.”

                “The unknown.”

                “Yes,” he said.

                And so at the end I passed through the gates to the Unknown, and became an adventurer again.


End file.
